Clinton Campaign Ignores Brown : Politics: Front-runner’s strategy is turning to a focused assault on Bush. The President has also fixed his sights on the Arkansas governor.

Voters here have been witness to a strange medical phenomenon. Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, sidelined for a week with laryngitis, has regained the ability to say all but two words.

Jerry Brown.

In campaign stops across the state in advance of Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary, Clinton has studiously ignored his sole remaining challenger in the Democratic presidential race, former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. Instead, he has fixed his sights on his likely November foe, President Bush.

Will Clinton ever again nod in Brown’s direction?

“He certainly doesn’t intend to,” said the governor’s deputy campaign manager, George Stephanopoulos, with only the barest of grins.

Clinton’s strategic maneuver, meant to give him an early start in what is expected to be a hard-fought general election campaign, is part of a wholesale shift in his candidacy.

In the last week, the Clinton effort has grown markedly more disciplined in delivering its message, shaping the daily focus toward issues the governor believes will be helpful in the fall.

And, in seeking to vault into the rarefied political sphere inhabited by Bush, Clinton has had an unexpected ally--the President himself. Bush has increasingly taken on Clinton and, in so doing, risked elevating the governor’s stature to his own.

Moves such as Clinton’s represent a natural progression in a presidential campaign. As the chance of one candidate’s winning the nomination rises, intraparty squabbling inevitably ebbs and attention turns toward November.

But it has been a particularly abrupt transition for Clinton, who less than three weeks ago was engaged in a down-and-dirty primary campaign in New York against his now-unmentioned foe. But Brown’s candidacy was dealt a heavy blow when he finished third in New York, losing not only to Clinton but to former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas, who had suspended his campaign.

Clinton’s New York victory allowed his campaign to turn to Pennsylvania with a renewed sense of confidence. That feeling has been bolstered by polls showing him with a comfortable lead in the state. Clinton received more good news Friday when two unions that had been critical of his labor record in Arkansas--the 900,000-member United Auto Workers and the 200,000-member United Mine Workers of America--endorsed him.

The nod from the UMW could bear immediate fruit; the union has substantial membership in Pennsylvania and the upcoming primary states of Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia.

The dual endorsements strongly signal that organized labor has decided to rally around Clinton and shift its focus toward the general election.

Despite these positive signs, there remains a lingering defensiveness to Clinton’s candidacy, stemming in part from questions about his personal life that periodically have dogged his campaign.

Three times in the last week, he publicly ridiculed his critics for focusing on these questions, and he has expressed annoyance about the nickname “Slick Willie.”

Clinton also has faced increasingly skeptical comments about his electability by Pennsylvania Gov. Robert P. Casey, a Democrat. On Friday, the New York Times quoted Casey as saying Clinton had the support of only a “tiny flyspeck” of the electorate.

At a news conference in Philadelphia, Clinton flatly declared that Casey was “wrong.” While conceding that he had been hurt by going through “the meat grinder of the primary process,” he added that as “more people get to know about what specific things I offer, what type of campaign we’re going to run . . . I think we have an excellent chance to win” in November.

Clinton campaign aides also remain confident about their long-term chances if they can maintain the sort of strategy unveiled in Pennsylvania.

“What we’re going to do is keep defining this as a Clinton-Bush race,” said Clinton spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers.

Two Clinton appearances here in recent days illuminated the campaign’s new direction.

On Tuesday, the day that Robert Alton Harris was put to death in California’s first execution in 25 years, Clinton toured a north Philadelphia block where residents working with police have managed to shoo away drug dealers.

The first question posed by reporters to Clinton concerned the death penalty. Tellingly, he did not even mention Brown, whose opposition to executions runs counter to Clinton’s view. Instead, he seized on Bush, who shares Clinton’s support of capital punishment.

The Democrat accused Bush of using the death penalty “as a cover” for weakening the federal government’s role in combatting local crime.

“We’ve put more money into federal agencies and taken more money off the streets of America in the last 10 years,” Clinton said. He then went on to criticize Bush for opposing gun controls.

A day later, Clinton delivered a much-promoted speech on the environment in which he excoriated Bush’s environmental record with a host of sound bites.

“George Bush promised to be the environmental President, but a photo op at the Grand Canyon is still about all we have to show for it,” Clinton declared.

In the 40-minute speech, Brown was never mentioned.

Bush has undeniably helped Clinton’s effort to cross onto the undefinable turf of a presidential contender. Last week, for instance, Bush delivered new proposals on education that were seen as virtual reruns of plans that Clinton has been flogging for months.

And on Wednesday, Administration aides were dispatched to try to publicly counter Clinton’s environmental plan and his criticism of Bush.

To Clinton aides, these skirmishes served to put the two men on the same level, theoretically enhancing the Arkansas governor’s status in the minds of voters.

That effort likely gained another boost Friday when Clinton and Bush spoke back-to-back via satellite hookups to the National Assn. of Hispanic Journalists, meeting in Albuquerque. Bush was at the White House; Clinton was in Columbus, Ohio.

The President sought to stress the positive, saying: “The economic news is a little better. And as that turns around, and I’m confident it will, I think we’ll see this country coming together, I think we’ll see a return to a little more optimism.”

Clinton, however, charged that “the middle class is collapsing, literally reducing in numbers while more people work harder for lower wages. We’re not moving in the right direction. We have lost our economic leadership.”

The audience of 700 people listened politely to both candidates. There was some hissing and laughter when Bush, as he has frequently in the past, noted that he has three grandchildren whose mother is a Latina.

In its attempt to stay alongside Bush, the Clinton campaign is leaving few tactics untried. Far more so than in the past, Clinton and his aides are striving to deliver their message of the day without the static of competing sound bites.

One senior aide was openly worrying earlier this week, for example, that Clinton could step on his own environmental proposal by making any comment about the Supreme Court hearing into Pennsylvania’s abortion restrictions.

Clinton is also making fewer appearances--in part to streamline the message and in part to devote more time to private fund raising for his cash-strapped campaign.

“The goal is to pace ourselves, to plan events carefully, to make sure to get the message out and to do a nice mix of substance and retail (politicking),” Myers said.